to bottlefeed or not to bottlefeed?

Hi! my name is Melissa, I am 13 yrs old, and I live in CA Bay Area. I am a newbie in many ways: to this forum thing, to 4H, and to goats. i have had 2 dairy goats, 1 alpine, 1 lamancha, since June 2003. the lamancha is pregnant, due March 25. my question is, what are the pros and cons to bottlfeeding??? My cousins bottlefeeds, my previous goat leader doesn't. If we get a doe from the lamancha, we are going to keep it , but if we get a buck we are going to give it to my cousins to improve their stock , and they want it bottlefed. So basically, I am just negotiating the (potential) doe.
Also, any tips on kidding would be nice.

Different question, what could prevent a 19-ish month old, 80lb, 23" at withers doe from getting pregnant? Nothing is wrong with the buck. I have tried breeding her three times and each time she came back in heat. :no: She certainly isn't super sick or anything, she is often frisky and will play with me; it is like she is still a baby. :haha:

cant wait to hear back, in the meantime, i'll bet you can guess what i will be doing!!! :worship: -> maaa-aa

the same exact thing is happening to my 3 yo pygmy doe! i am 15 and glad to hear i'm not the only young goat lover out there! could be fertility problem... are you useing the same buck that got the other pregnant?
i also heard that normal heats can occur even if the doe is already bred. i really doubt this, even though i heard it from a reliable source. just keep trying.
for the kidding of your other goat, keep a supply box nearby the kidding stall. have iodine for dipping the cord in and molasses to mix with water for the doe. expect more than one kid and have a few towels ready. watch for sudden sinking in of the stomach, she will look like she is super skinny along her backbone before she goes into labor. also streaming of a thick fluid from the vulva. these are usually good signs of kidiing in the next few hours. good luck!

The pros of bottlefeeding: You get to regulate the kids' intake of milk; the kids will become attached to you; if there is more than one kid, one will not be favoured over the other; kids will not be harassed by other does if they are in a seperate pen; you can raise more kids per doe by regulating milk intake. My family has a doe that raised her quadruplets and four more lambs besides.
The cons of bottlefeeding: More work for you; the kids' mother will scream for her kids until she becomes detatched from them.

As for your breeding problems, some does just don't like bucks, and you might need to keep a buck around for a month or two to ensure that your does are bred. Keep him there until they quit coming in heat. We had another doe that slipped her kids the first time she was bred, and didn't take the next time. We kept a buck with her for two months, and she got bred fine.

I wasn't planning on bottle feeding or milking. I needed to bottle feed and found out that I had better begin milking because I needed to cut costs on my milk replacer. I now can get enough milk to feed all my orphans plus the kids of the mothers I milk from milking. I'm beginning to see that this may just be part of the package so I may as well get used to it.

Bottle-feeding is a huge job, but it has great rewards. I have bottle-fed 6 kids but we didn't have the mothers on hand to confuse things. Ours were from a neighboring farm where the mothers refused to feed for one reason or another. If mom will nurse I would suggest letting them stay with mom for the first day or two to get that much needed colostrum. I don't know how much harder it will be on mom and kids when you seperate them, though.

Kids are as demanding as human babies and would yell and scream when they were hungery and then as they bonded they would yell and scream whenever they saw me in the yard. There were cold mornings when it was so hard to crawl out of bed at sun up to give a baby bottle. But I belive that bond we developed saved one of goats life. When she was about 2 years old she got in the way of a building we were moving and got her leg snapped in two. She and I both paniced. Most goats would have gone into shock and most likely died, but I held her in my arms and my being there gave her enough comfort to calm down while my husband and my father set the leg. She healed just fine! So that is my big pro to bottle feeding.

in response to Eunice, I dont exactly have an extra pen to keep the babies in except in a box in my room, and my "kidding pen" is the ordinary pen closed up with the other goat out side. Now, before you guys freak out, let me inform you that where I live, a "cold" winter is when it barely freezes!!!

also in response to eunice, all three times that my alpine was bred, my cousin confirmed that the buck really "covered" her.

I am amazed at how much you know and using the correct "slang" for all of this goat stuff. I ahve been in goats for a while now and still have a hard time with the correct words to use sometimes.

It seems like you have really done your research.

As far as Bottle Feeding goes. Some people say it is better and healthier for the mother to raise the babies and other's will say it is not. I know of some very big breeder's that raise all of thier kids on bottle to keep Desease's from being past in the mother's milk. It is all in who you talk to. I would suggest you do what is best for you. If you have the time to put into it it will be very rewarding. I have 1 Boer Buckling Bottle Baby right now. I have him in the house. He is 4 weeks old today. I put diapers on him, but he also uses a launder basket to pee in. It is very time comsuming to keep one in the house. Mine wants ot e with me at all times. If I get out of his sight for a minute he is hollaring and running crazy trying to find me. You have to watch him or her every minute. They will find every little thing to get into. They are actually worse thas a 2 year old child. Trust me on that. I have 3 kids and had been thru all of that.

Well, I think you need to think it over and figure out if you really want ot put all of your time into it. I would not trade mine ofr the world, but osmetimes wonder wwhat was I thinking when I started this.

Here is my site and you can take a look at my Bottle Baby, Whizzy. My other goats are on this site as well.

I can see you're learning a lot about your goats. Do you have an experienced goat project leader, friends/relatives with goats (you mentioned a cousin), or something like that nearby to answer questions? My DD13, is also in 4-H and I am the club's goat project leader. Doesn't mean I know everything, but I may be able to help a bit!

First, to bottle-feed or not. I really feel bottle feeding has a lot of advantages. Do you know if your goats are CAE negative? If you don't know that they are, you should assume that they are CAE positive, and the kids should be removed at the time of kidding. Don't even allow the doe to lick the kids clean, as CAE is passed through the saliva as well as the milk. Use teat tape on the doe's teats, just in case you miss the birth.

The colostrum will need to be heat treated before feeding it to the kids, and the milk will need to be pasteurized for them. Don't overfeed them or they will scour. If they still act hungry after their milk ration, they can have warm water 102* or so in their bottle.

You will be their momma, and they will bond with you. It's up to you to feed them, clean up after them and teach them their manners. If you let them climb on you when they are tiny, they'll think it's okay when they weigh a whole lot more. Start teaching them that rocks and toys are for climbing on, but they aren't allowed to jump up on people. Leading lessons can be done easily when you have the lead on the kid and the bottle in your hand. They will follow you anywhere for FOOD!! Before they know it, they're trained to lead.

While you are feeding them, handle them all over, including that tiny future udder. You want the kids to learn that people can touch them everywhere, and it doesn't hurt. Spend lots of time picking up their feet, placing their feet where you want them (teaching them to set up in the show ring). Doing this every day, just a bit of time each time you are feeding and handling them, will give you a goat that shows more easily and will be ready to be milked when it's her turn to freshen and join the milk line.

My vote is bottle feed them. I bottle fed my first two when I was nine. I milked the mother twice a day by myself even when she got gangrene mastitis and her udder rotted off. That was when I decided I didn't want to be a vet. Lady Bird (one of the first two I bottle fed) had horrible scurs, a salivary gland cyst which made her look like she had a huge chaw of tobacco in her cheek, and she was probably CAE positive. But I loved her <grin>. Her brother's picture is on my website (Little Man). He was a champion cart goat and lived to be thirteen...

Don't let your young head reel with worries about CAE at this point. I realize I will get spanked for this by those who "know better" but I eventually learned about CAE the hard way and it was a great learning experience. I know CAE is serious, I have a pos/neg herd and have suffered horrible losses and heartbreak, but pasteurizing the milk to prevent it is a real pain in the butt for someone your age and very time consuming and there is a large margin for error so you're better off at your stage in the game just feeding her milk back to them like it is - out of her udder - and not worrying about CAE. These kids would dam raise anyway so I figure what's the difference?

Make sure you get them disbudded at about a week old - don't put off disbudding them. You didn't mention this but it's very important.

Your doe that is not bred and comes back into heat may have two problems. First, take a good close look at her vulva and her teats. Do they look odd in any way? Do her teats look very small, like a buck's teats? If so, you have a hermaphodite on your hands. You should sell her as a pet or you can keep her as a pet. If she looks normal, you may have to talk to a vet and get some hormones to put her on as she may have cystic ovaries. The vet can work with you on this and it should not cost a lot of money to try the hormone therapy shots. YOu may even be able to get the shots and give them to her yourself under the advice of a vet. But the shots are prescription only.

No, her teats aren't really that small; in fact, her vulva is actually bigger than the other goat's. Besides, I haven't seen any buck's teats to compare them with! Would a hermaphodite have ordinary heats? She shows it so well, you can't miss it!

My young head isn't worrying about CAE very much, tho, because they were tested and came out negative. And I do know that I need to disbud.

Sounds like you're on the right track! If you're crazy about goats like I was and still am to this very day, you'll probably love bottle feeding <grin>.

My one hermaphodite had noticeably smaller teats than my other does her age, and her vulva was shaped funny. Hard to explain, she was just, "different". She was ever so slightly more masculine looking than my other does and of course was huge and beautiful in every other way.

I think they do have normal heats but will not take. I think I remember reading that they will sometimes act "bucky" towards other does more than others. Not sure but like I say I think I remember reading this.

Twogoats, I am a native San Diegan, transplanted (kicking and screaming) to Texas My nephew shows goats, horses and sheep in El Cajon, are you going to join 4H with your goats? How old is your Alpine? A virgin doeling who is serviced and continues to come into heat, when bred to a buck who has kids on the ground, is likely sterile. She can be a freemartin, cotwin to a buckling. Is she really messy with semen on her tail after the buck has bred her? Some does have incomplete vaginal canals, it's really nothing more than a box. Do you know anybody who does AI that could insert a speculum and check for you? Obviously the breeder owes you your money back or a new doe if this is the result, if she is a ADGA or AGS registered alpine. Vicki

Actually, I am in 4-H , I got the goat from my cousin , the breeder was my cousin , she bred for free , and I don't remember if she had a lot of mess on her rear. I think she might have. The buckling didn't have any kids, he was still somewhat of a kid himself. My doe in question is actually about 20 months old now, was about 18 during breeding attempts. Hope that answered your questions.

I don't think you should sound like you are unhappy in Texas, I have heard that some Texans are very loyal to their state and get easily offended. :yeeha: